Sorry for the late reply, having guests at DERI these days (hi Daniel :-) )
these are very good questions indeed.
As things are now, commercialization and commercial capital is not a
strict requirement for keeping up the service and keeping improving
for the time frame i mentioned (even thought they would speed things
up a lot).
Of course even http://sfi.ie has a stated goal the ultimate
commercialization of its funded research. If Sindice however was, at a
certain point, acquired by a commercial entity i think it would be
unrealistic to think that the strategy would greatly differ from say,
OpenCalais or Yahoo boss: the service as it is today stays free but
you can have some extra, which before wasnt available, e.g. QoS, for a
premium.
If this was even the case, however, it would mean the infrastructure,
and the distributed web of data itself, have been able to show real
value at which point, i believe, many others would jump into the game,
as it is normal and healthy.
But i understand you and others might have some concern e.g. by the
lack of a clear usage agreement on the site and without knowing how
long it will be supported. I will make sure this becomes indeed
clearly stated on the site
cheers
Giovanni
> May I ask what you said you'd do in those 4 years, re Sindice? Is the plan
> to build it out as a business so that it becomes self-supporting, or
> saleable so that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc buy it up? Or that it'll be in
> a stable-enough state after 4 years that the core works relatively cheaply
> and new fun things can be added by more research funding?
>
> Dan
>